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Featured in Development

Peter Alvaro talks about the reasons one should engage in language design and why many of us would (or should) do something so perverse as to design a language that no one will ever use. He shares some of the extreme and sometimes obnoxious opinions that guided his design process.

Featured in AI, ML & Data Engineering

Today on The InfoQ Podcast, Wes talks with Katharine Jarmul about privacy and fairness in machine learning algorithms. Jarul discusses what’s meant by Ethical Machine Learning and some things to consider when working towards achieving fairness. Jarmul is the co-founder at KIProtect a machine learning security and privacy firm based in Germany and is one of the three keynote speakers at QCon.ai.

Featured in Culture & Methods

Organizations struggle to scale their agility. While every organization is different, common patterns explain the major challenges that most organizations face: organizational design, trying to copy others, “one-size-fits-all” scaling, scaling in siloes, and neglecting engineering practices. This article explains why, what to do about it, and how the three leading scaling frameworks compare.

CryptoLicensing v2013 for .Net with Activation Console, Mono for Android Support

CryptoLicensing v2013 for .Net, recently released by India based LogicNP Software includes a new license service activation console which allows you to list activations associated with a license code with an ability to add and delete activations.

The usage reporting console included with the latest release provides support for multiple settings files. Moreover, exceptions occurring during CryptoLicensing.DeactivateLocally are now recorded and accessible via CryptoLicensing.GetStatusException method. In the same way, exceptions occurring during CryptoLicensing.Load/Save/Remove are now recorded and accessible via CryptoLicensing.GetStatusException() method.

CryptoLicensing v2013 for .Net provides an ability to save data field values along with profile setting and multiple licproj files can be loaded using CryptoLicenseGenerator instance including support for Mono for Android applications.

The latest release provides improved support for Perform Strong Name Verification and Perform Strong Name Verification of CryptoLicensing Module settings for assemblies running on Mono. It also includes several new methods and properties.

CryptoLicensing v2013 also includes improved error reporting for licensing failures when using the Generator API and when using customer deployed license service. Moreover, CryptoLicense.RemainingRuntime and CryptoLicense.CurrentRuntime properties are now protected against system date change. The vendor also improved the content of product documentation.

Software piracy is a bitter truth and it is not enough to develop quality software and sell it to customers. It is equally important to implement some form of licensing to protect your investment and ensure that you get adequate return on your investment in the developed software.

Licensing is necessary to reduce casual piracy and to prevent customers from sharing copies of your software with others. A robust licensing scheme is also necessary to stop hackers and crackers from creating unlicensed versions of your software from which the licensing logic has been bypassed.

InfoQ: How is CryptoLicensing for .Net different from other competing products?

The overriding goal of CryptoLicensing is to provide a way to implement licensing with minimal hassle for the customers. The main goal should be to keep honest customers honest. Many design decisions in CryptoLicensing are taking with this goal in mind.

For example, CryptoLicensing uses a hash of the computer name as the machine code. Using the computer name ensures that the activation and machine-locking scheme is free of common problems plaguing such schemes caused by changing hardware profiles.

Using the computer name as the machine code offers an excellent balance between security and resistance to machine changes. In terms of functionality, CryptoLicensing has many unique features not found in other licensing systems.

Examples include ability to tie license to specific version/name/culture of the host assembly, ability to perform strong-name verification of the host assembly even if such verification has been turned off or skipped for the assembly, strong Anti-Debug and Anti-Tamper protections.

Other unique feature is the Generator API which allows you to generate license codes programmatically. This can be used to achieve any level of customization and integration in your license generation, sales/e-commerce and order-fulfilment process.

InfoQ: Is it possible to activate a .NET Windows based application using CryptoLicensing for .Net? (Similar to that of Windows 7/8 activation)

Definitely. CryptoLicensing has full support for activated licenses. When generating licenses, you simply have to specify the maximum number of machines on which the license can be activated. When such a license is validated, the CryptoLicensing client-side API automatically communicates with the CryptoLicensing license service and activates the license.

InfoQ: Is it possible to protect an application using CryptoLicensing for .Net with license keys?

Yes, CryptoLicensing uses the latest military strength, state-of-the-art cryptographic technology to ensure that your software and intellectual property is protected. Cryptographic licenses are unbreakable even when using brute force computing power. Furthermore, since the licenses can only be generated using the private key (which only you possess), this means that it is impossible for a hacker to develop a 'keygen' (key generator) for your software.

InfoQ: Can you explain how CryptoLicensing for .Net protects ASP.NET web sites?

CryptoLicensing can be used to protect any kind of .Net software including an ASP.Net website. The license validation code that you have to integrate in your software source code is simple and consists of only a few lines:

InfoQ: Can you share with us the future road map for CryptoLicensing for .Net?

We are planning to add new license validation limits to CryptoLicensing. We are also planning to improve the existing Activation Console and License Management functionality in terms of ease of use and functionality. There are also some others which I cannot share at this point. We are always eager for customer feedback. Many of our most popular and useful features have been a result of customer feedback.